The Madhya Pradesh chief minister's office has returned a Right To Information application seeking details of the escape of the then Union Carbide Corporation chairman Warren Anderson from India.
The office returned the application of social activist S C Agrawal, claiming that there was no position of a 'central public information officer' in the office of the chief minister.
Agrawal had sought to know if it was true that then Chief Minister Arjun Singh assisted in the escape of Anderson from Bhopal on December 17, 1984.
He had also asked about action taken against Arjun Singh by the present Madhya Pradesh government and those guilty for the escape of Anderson.
According to the RTI Act, it is mandatory for every government office in the country to appoint a central public information officer to facilitate the answering of RTI applications sent to it.
Twenty six years after the world's worst industrial disaster left over 15,000 people dead, a local court on June 7 convicted former Union Carbide India chairman Keshub Mahindra and six others in the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy and sentenced them to two-year jail term. However, there was no word about Anderson in the judgment delivered by Chief Judicial Magistrate Mohan P Tiwari.
Anderson, 89, who lives in the United States, left the country soon after the tragedy and was declared an absconder.
The verdict has come under attack from various sections of the society, including civil rights activists and political parties.
